Category: Politics, Policy & Governance
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Walk for Reconciliation
Until last Sunday I’d never done this kind of thing before. By 3:45am I was driving through rainy blackness heading to the Sunrise Ceremony on Victoria Island, in the middle of the Ottawa river. The ceremony would mark the beginning of the close for the six-year-long Truth and Reconciliation Commission examining the effects of Indian residential schools… Read more
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So You Want to Lead a Community Project?
You have a ‘good idea’ and want to start a community project. Good for you. Or maybe not. Here are ten things you need to know to keep the ‘unity’ in ‘community.’ I’m going to assume that you already know that leading a project in your neighbourhood is a yin-yang experience: equal parts pleasure and pain, cooperating with strangers and… Read more
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Displaced Words
I spy with my little eye a billboard I don’t understand. This inscription is “AP3851,” a remnant of Palestinian artist Emily Jacir’s recent installation ex libris (2010-2012) at Alexander and Bonin in Chelsea. The 1948 Palestinian exodus, also known as al Nakba (Arabic for disaster, catastrophe, or cataclysm) ((http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/al-Nakba)) occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, as a result… Read more
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Roundabout Paradise
I knew it couldn’t last. A profusion of gorgeous wildflowers in a roundabout is just too attractive to a municipal weed whacker. Read more
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In the House With Sir John A.
Did some macro- to micro-Habicurious time travel this weekend in celebration of Canada Day. Spent July 1st (the launch of confederation) in Kingston (the first capital city of the united Canadas), touring the house of Sir John A. Macdonald, the country’s first Prime Minister and a Father of Confederation. Bellevue House was built in the… Read more
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Welcome to Quintland
UPDATE: August 5, 2018: Annette visited her birth house in North Bay today. Cecile was supposed to join her but cancelled due to health reasons. The story is here. UPDATE: As of November 19th, 2017, the birth house and museum of the Dionne Quintuplets has been moved to the North Bay waterfront, installed on Oak… Read more
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CurioCabinet: “Dame Marjorie’s School” 1894
Much to my delight, Library and Archives Canada continues to post more and more of their fascinating materials online for public access. Just in time for Halloween, they’ve posted a set of 52 costume/Halloween pics here on Flickr. Seems Lady and Lord Aberdeen, Canada’s Governor General from 1893 to 1898, ran an enviably entertaining and… Read more
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re:THINK(ing) Affordable Housing in Vancouver
And on go the thinking hat(s)…… “As part of the work being done by the Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability, re:THINK HOUSING, an open ideas competition, is being launched to generate a broader discussion of possibilities for Vancouver’s affordable housing crisis. Aimed at everyone who has an interest in affordable housing, from the general public, to… Read more
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Walking the Walk
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to city building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail that now seem like common sense to… Read more
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Exit the Television
We haven’t had a television in our house for a very long time. One day I got fed-up trying to place the family room furniture in a conversation-friendly layout that also permitted television viewing. So I called up a friend who drove over and drove away with our set, bound for a Community Living group… Read more